Picked A Fight With Bill Gates, Lived To Tell The Story | Clips | Dad Saves America

0:00 (transition whooshing) - Tell me about your encounter with Bill Gates. - Yeah, crazy night. There was a fundraiser for the Institute for Advanced Study which is the pinnacle of theoretical physics research, and I was working for Peter Thiel at the time, so they had asked someone from the Thiel Foundation to come, so that's what brought me there, and I showed up at this house. It's just a beautiful mansion outside Seattle. I walked through the front door, and there's a table with everyone's names on name cards, and so my last name, Gibson, was right next to Gates, and I see Bill Gates and I thought, "Wow, this is gonna be an interesting dinner," and I don't know, I'm kind of a troublemaker, so (John laughing) I knew I had to talk to Gates somehow.

0:47 He was a couple seats away from me, and so I couldn't engage with him directly during dinner, but afterwards, coffee is served and so on, then I'm like, "Okay, I gotta talk to Gates," so it's like, "Okay, what do I talk about?" So my boss, Peter Thiel, had been talking about this idea that outside of computers in communication technology, we're not seeing as much progress as we used to. The rate of progress has slowed down. So this is 2013- - Right.

1:15 - Not 20. Yeah, and not many people had been thinking that way, especially since every press release was saying, "We live in a world of exponential technological progress," so I thought, "Okay, that's what I'm gonna ask Gates about," so I walk up to him, I'm like, "Hello, Mr. Gates." He's like, "Oh, hi," and I'm like, "Oh, I'm Michael-" - Was he wearing the grandpa sweater? - Yes. - Was he- Yeah. - Grandpa kind of cardigan sweater, (John laughing) his classic trademark glasses, and he seemed like the nicest guy as soon as he started talking.

1:44 I was like, "Oh, I work for Peter Thiel," and he's like, "Oh, I know Peter," and I said, "Well, yeah, I'm wondering your view on this idea that maybe we're not making progress as fast as we used to," and all of a sudden, instantaneously, suddenly the guy changed, and suddenly the person who appeared was like the guy I saw in the "Pirates of Silicon valley" movie, (John laughing) or that you read about in the memoirs. He was like fire indignation, and he just says, "Oh, you're full of.

2:12 You're so full of," (both laughing) and I was like, "All right," and now my juices are flowing, and I'm like, "All right, I gotta engage this," so we go point counterpoint through each industry sort of talking about okay, what would progress mean in these industries? And I think, from Gates' perspective, he's done a lot of work in philanthropy to bring the best practices that we use in sanitation and health to the developing world where maybe people don't have access to that stuff, and sure enough, yeah, by that metric, we have made progress, but I think what I was referring to was just look in the developed world at certain things- - Yeah.

2:51 - And I went through things like healthcare and education. So education for one, I mean, we just spent so much more money at the higher education level. It's something like four X in real terms over the last 40 years. I don't think college is four times better, right? So that to me shows we're not making progress in education, K through 12, so I think when Gates saw that I meant just how do we do more for less, or do things better, or do things we couldn't do before?

3:16 Suddenly, technology was no longer just referring to smartphones, it was referring to just the way we do things, and he sort of came around, but man, he was like this geyser of positive statistics. He just... (John laughing) there was no way I could beat him in an argument. (laughing) (transition whooshing) - You've enjoyed this clip, (upbeat music) we've got more where that came from, and be sure to check out the full conversation with Mike Gibson. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, so you won't miss our interviews and short videos as they come out each week.

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